All (young) hands on deck

Midway Museum a magnet for school field trips

Second-graders from King-Chavez Primary Academy filed past cutouts of flight-deck crew members in colored vests denoting their various jobs during a recent tour of the USS Midway Museum downtown. More than 38,000 students visited the museum with their teachers last year. &#160; (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)

Second-graders from King-Chavez Primary Academy filed past cutouts of flight-deck crew members in colored vests denoting their various jobs during a recent tour of the USS Midway Museum downtown. More than 38,000 students visited the museum with their teachers last year. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)

The floating museum is undergoing renovations for the addition of three classrooms to its Midway University for the coming school year, when 50,000 student visitors are expected. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)

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The floating museum is undergoing renovations for the addition of three classrooms to its Midway University for the coming school year, when 50,000 student visitors are expected. (K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune)

DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO 
Just five years after the USS Midway Museum opened on San Diego's Embarcadero, the retired aircraft carrier has become one of the county's field-trip hot spots.

More than 38,000 students visited the museum with their teachers last year. The number of students visiting the below-deck warren of four classrooms known as Midway University has exceeded projections by so much that the Midway is doing renovations to add three classrooms for the coming school year, when educators expect to host 50,000 students.

The curb appeal of a 1,001-foot ship has students agog before they even board. When Isaiah Medina and his fifth-grade classmates from Morning Creek Elementary School in Sabre Springs arrived on the Navy Pier last month, he took a look at the USS Midway Museum and just said, “Whoa!”

A few hours later, after lessons on math, science and geography, Isaiah had wrapped his mind around the Midway sufficiently to recite that it weighed 74,000 tons, or 148 million pounds, when it was active.

Long-established venues such as the San Diego Zoo, which draws 210,000 students annually, and SeaWorld, with 130,000 student visitors, far surpass the new kid on the block for field trips. But the Midway's popularity is evident as it sells out for the academic year three weeks after its booking window opens in August.

The expansion is great news to Isaiah's teacher, Kellene Heinzman. She called last summer to request a field trip, but could not get her students aboard until last month.

Demand for Midway field trips is rooted in the academics, said museum education director Sara Mann Hanscom.

“We really listened to the needs of our teachers,” Hanscom said. “We had a creative, dynamic group of teachers. They gave us their game plan and basically instructed us to focus on science, math, geography and history, and that's what we did.”

Midway educators designed a second-through-eighth-grade course of study based on California's content standards – what the state says students should be learning in each subject at each grade level.

Students aboard the Midway are not on furlough from school. Second-graders use math to measure jet engines. Sixth-graders are handed digital cameras and climb about the ship documenting thermal-energy flow. Eighth-graders learn about Newton's laws as applied to aircraft launching and landing.

Isaiah visited the flight deck with a weather meter to record relative humidity and wind speed. Later, his class went below deck to a situation room where he and his classmates plotted longitude and latitude to track a hurricane.

Midway University's expansion efforts also target its No Child Left Ashore scholarship fund. Through grants and other fundraising, the Midway subsidizes the field-trip cost of $6 to $9 per head for low-income students.

Educators will continue to tinker with the lesson plans in ways that take advantage of the novel classrooms.

“Our goal is to show youngsters that you can be passionate and have a good time learning,” Hanscom said.

The students talk more about the schoolhouse than the lesson plans. Isaiah pronounced the Midway “awesome.” For him, taking wind-speed readings was cool, but not as cool as the F-8 Crusader plane with the shark's teeth painted onto it. He also wanted to know when he would get to climb a ladder.

And he was befuddled by the concept of a brig.

“When you're in the middle of the ocean, what are you going to do? Are you going to run away from the cops on a boat?” Isaiah asked.

Isaiah's classmates, too, said it was a great day at school.

“It's fun to walk through the squished rooms,” said Lisa Nukuto, 10.

“We're learning about the experience of how they were on the ship,” said Felipe Salido, 11. “It's kind of like we're living their lives again.”

They got the whole floating-city tour – post office, barbershop, cramped bunks and all. A great place to visit, Isaiah said, but he was hesitant when asked if he could live on board like the 4,500 sailors who served on the Midway during its duty years.

“Depending on what there was to eat,” he said, adding, “I might miss my family a lot.”